


Jay Against The World

by beetective



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout - Fandom, Fallout 3
Genre: Action/Adventure, Addiction, Blood and Gore, Blood and Violence, Character Death, Death, Drinking to Cope, Fanfiction, Gun Violence, Injury, Multi, Original Character(s), This is Fallout so kinda everything you pretty much expect
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-01-22 01:10:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21292343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beetective/pseuds/beetective
Summary: When Jay's dad leaves the vault under mysterious circumstances, she is thrust into the outside world.It's violent, radioactive, confusing and everyday is a constant battle to stay alive.But will this timid vault dweller, who never had to fight in her life, be the key to the wastelands survival?





	1. Escape!

It had all happened so fast. Amata waking her up, grabbing whatever she could find in her room and shoving it into her bag, defending herself against the crazy vault guards....god, had she really killed those men? The people that have been there all her life? She knew they didn't really do anything around the vault much, they didn't help when Butch and his gang were being Grade A assholes... but watching them snap so fast, trying to kill her....it was really too much to take in.

Butch had helped, she guessed. He had strayed guards away from her when they were looking for her. Probably because she saved his mom, but surely it wasn't just because of that? Would he had done it if she hadn’t stepped in? It was all so confusing.

Seeing everything get thrown into chaos in such a short amount of time was a shock, yes, but it was something more. It was like living in a set world your entire life, but then the facade shattering and revealing a darker purpose.

Jay stood there, shaking at the entrance to Vault 101, her home for 19 years and all she's ever known. As soon as she ran out of those vault doors, the guards sealed them, leaving her alone. That's how she felt standing there, gripping her baseball bat till her hands were white and her heavy breathing being the only sound she heard.

She was truly alone and that's what scared her the most.

Jay collapsed there on the dirt of the tunnel, her bag cushioning her against the hard rock. She wanted to cry, to scream but nothing came out. Sitting there, she knew she had to get up and out of this goddamn tunnel or else, she would rot here.

She just sat there for a minute more, though. Staring at the signs in the tunnel, the ones that read pleadingly, 'let us in!' Skeletons rotted around where she sat, and she suddenly jumped up away from them. That was the fate of the people who were just too late. 

Then she remembered her father. If she was late, would he become a skeleton too? If she did not get to him on time and see what happened, would he die without her knowing? Becoming a mangled corpse in the landscape, without a name and picked at by birds?

But a harder question nagged at the back of her skull.

Would this be her fate too?

She shook her head, convincing the thoughts to go away. Can't worry about that now. She isn't a silly vault girl anymore. She had to be a survivor, whether she liked it or not. 

Quickly walking over the skeletons, Jay heard crunching under her boot and she cringed. Reaching the weather-worn door, she saw the first real sunlight she had ever seen. It was shining through the cracks, feeling somewhat excited and terrified at the same time, she flung open the door.

It hurt. Looking straight at the sun was not a good idea and she hastily covered her eyes. It warmed and blinded her. She heard several pings on her Pip-boy and sat down on a nearby rock to examine it.

It had picked up some frequencies. One labelled 'GNR Radio', another 'Enclave Radio', two distress beacons and a strange broadcast that was just a jumble of letters and numbers with even stranger sounds emitting from it. 

She decided to ignore the strange signal, surely it was just a bunch of nonsense? It did interest her to some extent, she might investigate it if she had the time.

She had no time to worry about the distress signals either, she had her own problems to deal with.

The last two radio signals seemed the most promising, they seemed official. She turned to the GNR Radio but was met with little sound. She thought it was her Pip-Boy messing up so in response, she hit it a few times and put it to her ear. Hearing a faint voice drowned out by static, she strained to hear.

'......children......Dog.......paradise..…slaves'.

It meant nothing to her. Maybe if she went closer to the source, the signal could be better?

She sighed and switched to the last station, Enclave Radio. To her surprise and delight, it came out clear with no static. Old American music that she could not identify greeted her ears.

'Who is the Enclave?'

The voice startled her. It was loud and clear and took her a moment to realise it was coming from the station she was on. Jay listened.

'The Enclave is your friend, your neighbour and yes, me, President John Henry Eden but most importantly, it's you America'.

That didn't answer the question. 'President....?', she thought out loud. There were still authority figures even after the bombs dropped?

She switched it off. Jay didn't need constant monologues, she needed to find her dad.

Though, it was comforting that there were people still capable of radio transmission, she would look into it when there was time. 

Now focusing attention away from her Pip-Boy, Jay scanned the area.

It turned out the vault was situated on a hill, a very rocky and dusty one. There was a path near her leading down the hill and in the distance she saw a town, or what remained. Wooden shells of houses were all that was left, along with what seemed to be a red, metal rocket. Not a real one, but Jay couldn’t make out what it was really for.

A broken highway with only it’s supports being left to stand was on her right, even further on the horizon she could see variously damaged and crumbling buildings. Skyscrapers most likely.

Everything was quiet. Eerily quiet. All Jay’s ears were greeted with was harsh winds that often stopped then started again, picking up dust and small rocks along its wake, scratching her skin. Shivering, she reached into her bag for something to cover the thin and often uncomfortable jumpsuit.

Shoved far down the bottom lay a leather jacket.

Not just any leather jacket, no, but a _ Tunnel Snake _ leather jacket.

She had completely forgotten that Butch had hastily pushed it into her hands just as they parted.

It was a bit big, but she felt a little less lonely and a lot more wind-protected than before.

Breathing in a deep breathe (almost regretting it as she was sure something was rotting nearby) and adjusting her glasses, Jay gripped the baseball bat that she had received on her tenth birthday in her hands. It was either that or the 10mm pistol Amata had given Jay to defend herself, but really she would have been kidding herself if she said she knew how to use the damn thing. It was a wonder how she got she managed to get past the guards with it. More ammo was being conserved at least. The third option didn’t show appeal either, what real harm would a BB gun do if it wasn’t against radroaches? At least she knew how to fire _ that. _

Carefully making her way down the hill, her boots hit asphalt. The road lead into the small town she saw before. There was no other option in sight.

Sun scorched papers danced over her feet as they made their way down the short road, odd sounds of clicking broke the quiet.

Just as she hit the border of the town, her Pip-Boy pinged and a searing pain engulfed her right arm. She immediately dropped her weapon.

“Motherfucker!” Jay let out in response to the pain.

Turning to her right, the source of the clicking and whatever had hit her was revealed. 

A giant fly. A really fucked up giant fly. Out of it’s long straw like ‘mouth’ oozed a brown substance, dripping to the ground.

“Holy shit”

Jay stood frozen looking at the mutated creature. At the moment, it seemed to sit there in the air still as well.

Then it fired something again.

This time Jay ducked and whatever it had fired hit one of the houses, creating an audible cracking.

“Holy shit holy shit”

Fight or flight kicked in and with not enough time to retrieve her weapon, she ran. Running into the nearest scorched house, she flung herself behind a wooden cabinet that somehow wasn’t in pieces from the fallout.

Without the bat, she only had the 10mm. Reaching into her bag and gripping the gun in her left hand Jay peaked out from behind the cabinet. The fly was slowly making its way over. Taking a breath in she crouched and aimed the gun-

But something shot the bug before she could. 

A red laser struck clean through the bug and it fell to the ground with a wet splat. 

A puddle of green bled around the corpse.

Looking around for her savior, something strange came into view.

What looked to be a giant ball of metal hastily stuck together with many thin wires resembling antennas floated down the street. Near the bottom of it looked to be a long thin cylinder with a glowing red dot at the end.

The source of the laser.

It floated to the corpse and stopped.

Then it slowly turned around looking straight at her. 

Jay hastily gripped her weapon again thinking the worst.

Silence.

Without a noise, the orb-like robot turned back around and floated back down the street, spewing the same music she heard from the President Eden broadcast.

Jay slumped back against the cabinet and sighed.

Pain suddenly rippled down her arm where that bug had struck her - it felt as if someone was shoving a dagger slowly beneath her shoulder. The adrenaline had worn off. Groaning in pain, she assessed the damage.

A worm the size of her pinky was sinking its way into her arm.

Her throat filled with vile and her stomach turned but Jay quickly swallowed and pushed it back down.

Use her fingers to pull it out? A bit of it might break off. 

Use a sharp rock to dig it out? Ghastly.

Shivering and seeing not that many options, Jay picked up a piece of broken glass nearby.

Surely it was irradiated but the risk had to be made to get this worm - or whatever it was - out of her body. It was better than getting infected and losing the arm completely.

Ripping off a part of her jumpsuit leg, she tightly wrapped it around the area above the wound and positioned the glass between the worm and the hole that it had dug into her flesh.

She knew this would hurt like a bitch.

“Okay three...two…” Jay whispered softly to herself.

A memory of her father counting down to rip out a splinter with tweezers filled her head and with that thought, she dug the glass piece underneath the worm right in between the walls of the hole and its body. 

Tears misted her eyes as it cut into her arm and the mouth of the worm was torn away, flinging the wretched thing to the ground.

Jay immediately threw up.

Nausea filled her body as her stomach was empty and her vision blurred for a second.

“Whoo! Okay okay” Jay said as her head shook, trying to bring her mind back to focus.

Inspecting the worm, it wriggled miserably, small mouth open and closing like a fish.

Retrieving her bat from the road, she struck the worm, turning it into a pile of green goo.

Now her arm needed to be patched up.

The worm had dug quite a chunk out of her, if it was Jay's guess, it would have probably been a few centimeters wide and a bit deeper going down. That sized hole would need a needle and thread, something that she didn’t have access to.

But she did have some bandages. The kind that you would wrap around a limb.

All that was needed was something to sterilize the wound. 

Something alcoholic might do, something like vodka, those kinds of drinks that her father would never let her touch. She always heard that that would work being a substitute for the proper alternative.

Surely thinking the area would be picked dry of resources, Jay still desperately searched the area.

Each house each had something to search through, even one had a locked safe (this broke two of her precious bobby pins) which she found herself cheering when she opened its contents. It was mostly old dry and destroyed clothes but she did find some extra bobby pins to replace the ones she lost and a comic book that was somehow in good condition. To her utter surprise, she had also found a bottle of half-filled whiskey in a mailbox. Jay made a mental note.

Feeling hopeful and her pain dulling, she took off her jacket and slipped her hand through the zipper of the jumpsuit, it revealing her entire arm and slipping down half her back.

Not wanting to use all the whiskey, she poured a small enough amount that it got over the entire wound.

It burned, bringing back the pain and some tears at the corner of her eyes.

The wound was cleaned to the best of her ability and covered.

Feeling somewhat proud of this accomplishment, she zipped back up her vault and pulled back on her jacket, the only thing left from the attack being a hole in the clothes and an aching feeling in her arm.

Jay knew she would most definitely need to find some proper supplies sometimes soon, as whiskey and bandages could only go so far. Who knows what else could be out there?

Fiddling with her items she weighed the 10mm in her hands as she sat and thought.

How long would she really last out here?

Not being able to take down a fly really showed how incompetent at defending herself she was. In the Vault, it was always Amata sticking up for her. She even kicked Butch in the nuts to get Jay’s glasses back. The only time that she had stuck up for Amata was when she was getting harassed before the G.O.A.T exams, and that ended up with Jay having to hold a bloody rag up to her nose while Butch nursed a bruised eye. Her dad was really angry about that one. Amata was thankful though, and they spent the rest of the day eating Cherry Bombs on her bed having a good time.

Jay wasn’t a child anymore. This was the outside world and if she didn’t adapt, she would be dead. 

It was getting dark, too.

When searching the houses, there was one that she didn’t check. 

It wasn’t destroyed like the others, all four walls and the roof was intact.

Perfect shelter for the night.

A perfect place to hide for all those mutated monsters too.

With no other choice, Jay stood up and moved towards the house with both her hands holding the 10mm pistol. It was a more deadly weapon than the baseball bat (though she still kept it) and in close quarters it would be hard for her to miss shots.

At least, that's what she thought.

Making her way to the back entrance as that was the closest, she shoved open the door with her foot. The handle had rotted and chipped away.

Not a very safe door, but at least there was one.

It creaked open revealing a living space that wasn’t destroyed at all.

Cautiously, Jay stepped in holding the gun upright ready to shoot, noticing more details. The house had an odd yellow hue about it, almost unnatural. It smelt like dust, old papers and something else she couldn't put her finger on. Alcohol? There was a light inside that was most likely the reason for-

“Who the hell-! ”

Sudden shouting startled Jay, making her jump around to the noise and hands tighten, making another noise join the fray. 

It shook her and made her ears ring, confusing her for a few seconds before she realized what she had done. 

The women stood, now drawn silent with hands over her stomach, red making its way past her hands and staining the brown patchwork jacket she wore. Her lip trembled as she fell to her knees, eyes pleading towards who had shot her. 

Legs jelly and mind blank, Jay's eyes widened at the sight of the dying woman. She dropped the pistol she was shaking so bad. 

Everything had happened too fast. 

All too fast. 

A sudden thought pierced the emptiness of her mind.

_ Stimpacks. _

Flinging herself onto the ground next to the wounded woman she sifted through her bag. She had only two, taken from the vault first aid box, but she was willing to spare them to right her mistake.

Feeling the familiar metal cylinder, she wretched the plastic cover off of the container and stuck it in the woman’s abdomen, injecting the liquid into her.

Jay waited.

Nothing happened,

The woman wasn’t breathing.

It was too late.

“Oh my god...I-I’m so sorry...I’m so sorry…”

The nineteen-year-old girl began to cry over the body, someone who she didn’t even know the name of.

Less than twenty-four hours from leaving the Vault and Jay Dean had murdered the first person she had met.


	2. Baby Steps

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jay discovers two new towns - one from before, one from after.

The stain glared at her through the dark.   
Though the body was removed, as far as Jay could drag it out into the wasteland and covered in rocks, the stain on the hardwood floor remained.  
It taunted her as she lay with her knees curled up to her chest on the dead woman's bed.  
Cold air drafted through the cracks of the broken door. Even though it was wedged shut, paranoia creeped in. Thoughts of it swinging open and someone coming in repeating the cycle of dead inhabitants in the shack drifted into Jay’s mind.  
Suffice to say, she could not sleep.  
Trying to keep her thoughts away, she sat up with her back to the wall and sifted through her bag, pulling out a squashed plastic water bottle taken from her room.  
It was only half full, she tilted it in her hands watching the water swish from side to side.  
Somehow, it calmed her.  
Pushing her legs off the end of the bed, she carefully cleaned her glasses before standing up. Moving around and searching the house for resources seemed like a good idea to keep her mind off things. She certainly could not sleep.  
A yellow lamp cast dim light across the room and musty air filled her lungs. The house was divided into two rectangles, the lighted section being a bedroom and the other an unlighted kitchen and dining area.   
It was a mess.  
Empty bottles, various containers, papers and food boxes littered the small house. Most of the trash was around the bed and kitchen, strange stains of uncertain origins spotted around them.   
Most of it was undeniably trash. Useless garbage.  
Though there were some good finds. Turpentine would definitely come in handy, a full bottle at that. A bone-saw and hammer...that could be used for something. They seemed somewhat useful anyway.   
Jay collected everything that she could see some use in. A carton of cigarettes, a camera, even more turpentine, Wonderglue, three more bobby pins and two Stimpacks. She wasn’t so sure about the toaster and left that, she would come back for it if necessary. The amount of food found relieved her. Instamash and Salisbury Steak she was familiar with but the weird meats in the fridge...they smelt strange. It would be wrong of her to leave such good food, so in the end Jay decided to wrap it up and hope for the best.  
By far the strangest of her find in the house was a plastic bag full of blood. Specifically type O+ as it had written crudely with sharpie on the front.  
In the Vault, blood packs were used if someone had extreme injuries, but they were still used rarely. That was in a controlled environment with someone who knew medicine doing the procedure. Who had been behind these ones found in the world outside?  
Not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, Jay took it and stuffed it in her bag as well, making sure nothing could break any of the containers.  
The bag on her bag seemed well filled with this little raid. She tried not to think of the life she took to receive these helpful items.  
One thing bugged her though.  
Among the items, even the strange ones, there were another two that puzzled her. She had never seen them before.  
The first item was a thick cylindrical needle, attached on both sides via a leather strap were two other cylinders. All three were filled with some sort of differing liquids. A clear thin tube came out of one of the side cylinders and entered into the other.  
The second item seemed to be an inhaler.  
At least, she thought it was.  
The only way to truly find out what they were supposed to be was to test the liquids inside them, but Jay felt no need to put herself in a chemical induced coma for science.   
She had left the two mysterious items at the top of her pack.   
With the house picked clean, there was not much left to do but leave the place. She had sat on the bed for hours trying to get to sleep, and spent her time sifting through the houses content. Dawn could be seen coming through the house's cracks.   
Taking one last look at the now browning stain on the hardwood floor, Jay kicked the wedge she had put through the gaps of the door and pushed it open. A cold morning breeze met her face, sifting through her dark hair and made her spine shiver.   
Slowly retracing her steps back to the destroyed town, she glanced at her Pip-Boy.  
SPRINGVALE was underneath a small box, a deep green dot which seemed to represent herself sat inside. She could make the map zoom in and out until she saw individual houses and roads. A soft green glow made her wrist seem sick.  
So that was the ping that had given her away.  
A map marker.  
It sat alone in a sea of green.  
Lowering her Pip-Boy, she looked ahead to the now cracked and trash littered road.  
At the end of the street it split into two paths.  
Swallowing her anxieties and deepening fear of not knowing what to do, she took the right path.  
A few steps in, she immediately saw it.  
She couldn’t believe she hadn’t seen it before.  
A giant steel mass sat on top of the slight incline the road had led into, only a small walk away. The whole structure seemed so Frankinstinian, jumbles of wire ran down patchwork walls of metal, all different shapes and sizes. Huge beams jabbed at the sky, making it look somewhat threatening. Dirt, stains of strange origins and graffiti went all around the outside of it. Now that the sun had risen more on the horizon she could see hawks - or at least she thought they were hawks - circling the structure high in the sky as if they were waiting for it to die. A small amount of metal were scattered around the edges as if some had fallen off.  
It was huge.  
God, she really was blind. Or maybe it was the panic from yesterday.  
Maybe - maybe her father had made a pit stop here after leaving? Springvale wasn’t much and from the looks of it he had not stayed there long, not long at all.  
Whatever it was, the place seemed promising.  
Slowly jogging towards it - what if her father was still there? What if he had decided to stay the night? What if-   
She stopped and saw the robot, expecting it to shamble towards her as soon as it had its sights on her and fire whatever ammo it had, or just beat her to death with its bare hands, bits of her brains newly adorning its fingers like shining diamonds.  
But no, it sat there, its upper bottom humming and slowly twisting side to side.  
This was a good sign.  
Starting her pace back up again, Jay made her way up to the entrance - or what she assumed it was - to the…  
Well was it a mound? Was it hollow?  
The robot whired back and forth, its buzzing mixed into the wind.  
Jay knocked at the metal wall.  
A few seconds went by.  
She stared at the robot.  
“What are you protecting a metal hunk of junk f-”  
She got her answer before it came out of her mouth.  
The rumble and sudden movement knocked her on her ass. It felt like a small earthquake was occurring but no it couldn’t be - she had never experienced anything like this in the vault. Dust shifted and small rocks moved.  
The metal mound had moved - or at least a part of it. Giant portions of the wall were moving away from her, rising to the sky. A piece of metal fell off and landed near her foot, almost slicing it in two. She jumped away. The sound was horrible. Metal on metal screeching in her ears almost like a dying animal, she covered them. It seemed to last for a good thirty or forty second and as soon as it happened, it stopped, locked into place by an unknown mechanism.  
It looked like the jaws of a robotic shark that lived in the dirt like it did the sea about to swallow her whole, slicing her to pieces with its steel jaws.  
Sitting there dumbfounded by what happened, the robot finally spoke.   
“ Welcome to Megaton. The bomb is perfectly safe. We promise”

**Author's Note:**

> This was pretty much born out of my love for Fallout and wanting to explore things that we couldn't in-game.


End file.
